


As Thirst Holds Water

by MonsieurClavier



Series: Tomarrymort Stories [2]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: 'tries' being the operative word, Age Difference, Alpha Tom Riddle, Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Alternate Universe, Antagonism, BAMF Harry Potter, Claiming, Courtship, Cross-Generation Relationship, Denial of Feelings, Drama, Eventual Smut, Falling In Love, Happy Ending, High-Functioning Sociopath Tom Riddle, Knotting, M/M, Mating Bond, Mating Cycles/In Heat, Mating Rituals, Mentor/Protégé, Minister for Magic Tom Riddle, Mutual Lust, Mutual Pining, No Horcruxes, No Voldemort, Not Canon Compliant, Omega Harry Potter, Omega Verse, POV Tom Riddle, Plotty, Politics, Possessive Tom Riddle, Powerful Harry Potter, Professor Tom Riddle, Protective Tom Riddle, Romance, Sane Tom Riddle, Sassy Harry Potter, Seduction, Slow Burn, Snark, Social Justice, Strategy & Tactics, Teacher-Student Relationship, True Mates, ancient greek customs brought to life for entirely puerile reasons, and wet dreams, do two losses make a win?, eventually, good thing tom's are made of steel, gorgeous delicate kickass omega harry who gives alphas twice his size nightmares, harry has a heart of gold and fists of fury, harry is determined not to be charmed by tom, harry lives for kicking alphas in the balls, he also loses, he loses, nightmares AND wet dreams???, ridiculous man courts equally ridiculous boy, so it's... a win-win?, tom is determined not to give a real shit about harry, tom likes it so he tries to put a ring on it, wetmares??
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-31
Updated: 2021-01-14
Packaged: 2021-03-10 22:08:57
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 11,121
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28454394
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MonsieurClavier/pseuds/MonsieurClavier
Summary: Professor Tom Marvolo Riddle, Defence Against the Dark Arts instructor and devious political mastermind, has never wanted a mate. He has only ever wanted power. But when he meets an extraordinarily powerful Omega student with a convenient Potter heirship, he realises he might just be able to have both.Thankfully, the Erastes Act of 1783 still holds sway, and gives Tom a legal, respectable means of pursuing his prey—his delightfully rebellious prey, which does not seem to understand that it is prey at all.Or: A plotty, slow-burn A/B/O romance in which Harry is a badass Omega who don’t need no man, and Tom isn’t nearly as in control of his own Alpha instincts as he’d like to be.
Relationships: Harry Potter/Tom Riddle, Harry Potter/Tom Riddle | Voldemort
Series: Tomarrymort Stories [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1798186
Comments: 217
Kudos: 1186
Collections: Top-tier HP/TMR Fics





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [itsevanffs](https://archiveofourown.org/users/itsevanffs/gifts).



> The title is inspired by Ocean Vuong’s [incredible poem](https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/88734/a-little-closer-to-the-edge): “O minutehand, teach me / how to hold a man the way thirst / holds water.”
> 
> In this alternate universe, there is no Deputy Headmaster position at Hogwarts, and owls are allowed to deliver letters to students at all mealtimes, not just breakfast. 
> 
> Oh, and! If you’ve never heard of the terms “Erastes” and “Eromenos” before, they’re basically ancient Greek terms for when an older man (an Erastes) became a mentor to a younger man (an Eromenos) in exchange for sexual favours. This is an extreme over-simplification, however, which lacks nuance and which I have resorted to for the sake of brevity; I recommend reading [this Wikipedia page](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pederasty_in_ancient_Greece) if you’re still curious.
> 
> In this story, I have combined the Erastes/Eromenos relationship with the Omegaverse trope, such that a young Omega who hasn’t yet found their mate but still needs an Alpha for their heats is “taken care of” by a trusted older Alpha, or Erastes, who also mentors them in a professional capacity. The Omega thus benefits in more ways than one, by having a safe, freely chosen, legally registered partner for their heats, who can protect them from sexual predation by other Alphas and who can guide them in career matters. In return, the Alpha gains social standing as an Erastes, as well as the pleasure of basically having a horny Omega on tap.
> 
> More notes on how this alternate universe functions can be found below, after the first chapter!

The halls of Hogwarts were as familiar to Tom as the blood in his own veins, throbbing with magic and resonant with power. It had been many a year since he had walked these halls, and as impervious as he usually was to sentiment, even he could admit that there was a certain nostalgia in revisiting his childhood home.

This was no mere visit, however. It was a relocation. Tom would be living here from now on, until he eventually saw fit to launch his campaign for Minister.

Curling his lips in a smile that was several degrees less supercilious than he wanted it to be, Tom ascended the stairs to the headmaster’s office without any interference from the gargoyle that had once guarded them. The creature could only watch his ascent sullenly.

Slughorn had done away with the password system, referring to it as old-fashioned, and claiming that he would rather his students have immediate access to him in times of need, without any barriers to slow them down during an emergency.

Tom privately thought that Slughorn only wanted even more helpless visitors to regale with his rambling tales of who he knew and how. Despite Slughorn’s open-door policy, Tom was willing to bet that far fewer students approached him than had Dumbledore.

Dumbledore. That poor, infirm, elderly man, unable to perform his duties as headmaster. How humiliating it must have been for him to be forced into an early retirement by the school board—the very same board that Tom had been gradually seducing away from Dumbledore’s influence for decades.

Tom’s smile curled even higher. In the infernal chess game that he and Dumbledore had been playing since their first conversation in 1938, the black king had finally taken the white. It was a more bloodless coup than what Tom would have preferred, but still, a win was a win. It wasn’t _his_ fault that Dumbledore was too plagued by a mysterious magical malady to fight back. It was entirely Dumbledore’s responsibility that he had fallen for Tom’s trap, had gone hunting for a nonexistent Horcrux, and had wound up with an obviously cursed hand.

Just in time for Slughorn to present himself as a viable, non-cursed replacement. Clever Horace. The sly old fox had likely noticed Tom’s subtle machinations against Dumbledore long ago, and, instead of interfering with them, had decided to use them for his own benefit. Just as Tom had known he would. And Slughorn, in unspoken thanks, had appointed Tom as the Defence Against the Dark Arts professor—also as Tom had known he would. It was an example of Slytherin solidarity at its finest… and most self-serving.

“Horace,” he greeted the new headmaster, and Slughorn hopped up from behind his desk with all the speed of a frog Animagus.

“Tom!” Slughorn all but leapt at Tom, grabbing Tom’s hands in his own unpleasantly damp, pudgy paws. “Such a joy, such a marvel it is see you here, back at Hogwarts!”

“A marvel, indeed,” said Tom dryly, knowing full well that it was a painstakingly engineered event and not a miraculous happenstance. “Thank you for your kind words to the board on my behalf; I daresay it made all the difference in my application.”

Slughorn puffed up like Puffskein. “Why, I… Of course I’d speak up for you, Tom! Not only were you an exemplary Hogwarts student in your own right, but you then spent three decades travelling the world, learning how to defend against the Dark Arts and duelling Dark wizards, and another two decades teaching the subject at Durmstrang. The board would have been remiss in not hiring you.”

Tom assumed the slightly hangdog expression of the persecuted. “Headmaster Dumbledore would not have hired me.”

“Headmaster Dumbledore is enjoying a well-deserved retirement,” said Slughorn firmly, ushering Tom into a comfortable patchwork chair opposite his desk, and reclaiming his own towering, brass-studded leather armchair. Everything in the office was oversized, from the heavy mahogany desk to the grand, gold-threaded, floor-to-ceiling tapestries. Slughorn always was compensating for something, not that Tom cared to reflect on what it was. “He was, after all, an Omega, bless his heart. A powerful wizard, and a good man, but sometimes his judgement—”

“Not that the acuity of a person’s judgement has anything to do with whether they are an Alpha or an Omega,” Tom cut in, more coldly than he ordinarily did with Slughorn.

Slughorn tittered nervously. “Oh, yes, to imply otherwise would be… that would be rather politically incorrect of me, wouldn’t it?”

 _And factually incorrect_ , Tom stopped himself from saying. For all that he loathed Dumbledore, the man’s status as the world’s most magically gifted Omega had nothing to do with it. Anti-Omega prejudice was both irrational and distasteful. That Hogwarts now had a headmaster so openly sexist boded ill for its Omega students, and Tom swore to counteract any discrepancies in point-taking with his own point-giving—not out of any foolish, Gryffindor-ish belief in _fairness_ , but because a playing field was so much more interesting when it was level. Just as his own playing field with Dumbledore had been level—strategy counteracting strategy in a deadly game of chess. Deadlier for Dumbledore, as it turned out.

“These are changing times,” Slughorn babbled on, because Tom’s face, when cold, was rather forbidding, and Tom knew it. “Why, just this month, I was brunching with the Secretary of Commerce, and she boasted that her Omega daughter wanted to follow in her footsteps!”

“Commendable,” Tom said shortly. “There is—or ought not to be—any reason an Omega cannot be Secretary of Commerce.”

Slughorn gawked at him. Then a shrewdness flickered across his face, as quickly as a fish darting in and out of sight in shallow water. “A progressive viewpoint,” Slughorn conceded. “That would be the official position one would expect to hear from a forward-looking Minister of Magic, in a few years.”

“A few years?” Tom chuckled. “You overestimate my ambition. A few decades, surely.”

“So you _are_ seeking election!” Slughorn exclaimed triumphantly. “And I would never overestimate your ambition, which I am confident has no bounds. I had always predicted... You have such talent, Tom, and such charisma, that I had always anticipated you would rise to the highest of heights.”

“You flatter me, Headmaster,” Tom said, adding a flattering lilt of his own to the title he addressed Slughorn with.

Slughorn went pink. His scent—normally an unremarkable mixture of coffee grounds and dry hay—sharpened, and he pinkened even further, likely aware of _Tom_ being able to smell him. Alphas were not supposed to smell like that in the presence of other Alphas. “Er, no, I… W-Will you… Will you be requiring staff quarters only for yourself, or for yourself and a mate?”

A pitiful question from a pitiful man. Tom answered it bluntly. “I haven’t been all that invested in marrying and siring cubs, Horace. There is too much to do of import; once it is even halfway done, I might consider a more long-term personal commitment.” Tom resisted the urge to smirk, recalling Slughorn’s own bitter disappointment when Tom had presented as an Alpha instead of an Omega in fifth year. Had Tom been an Omega, he wouldn’t have escaped Slughorn’s seventh-year ‘private consultations’ without a formal declaration of courtship as per the Erastes Act.

“Perhaps,” Slughorn suggested, clearly remembering his own heartbreak but unwilling to admit it, “you might take on an Eromenos before you find your true mate. At least you will have companionship, that way.”

“Do you believe me lacking in _companionship_ , Headmaster?” Tom asked, letting himself smirk at last.

“N-no!” Slughorn was now beet-red, and sweating, besides. “I wouldn’t—wouldn’t know—wouldn’t think, really, about you—your companionships, or how you may—” Slughorn cleared his throat “—conduct yourself,” he finished, miserably.

Disgusting old fogey. He’d lusted after Tom before Tom had even been of an age to present, so Slughorn deserved every bit of the mortification he was currently experiencing. Tom continued to smirk at him. Wordless. Ruthless.

Manfully dragging himself out of the quicksand of his own embarrassment, Slughorn said in as professorial a tone as he could manage, “An Eromenos would enhance your social standing, Tom, as a gentleman of consequence and as an Alpha of healthy appetite—an Alpha without a mate but not without… vitality.”

 _Virility, you mean_. The public was, admittedly, stupidly obsessed with the sexual prowess of candidates for Minister of Magic, who were all invariably Alphas. The newspapers breathlessly reported on every Eromenos, every love affair, every mate, every wedding, every honeymoon, and every child. Tom also picked up on what Slughorn was hinting at with the phrase ‘of consequence’; only Pureblood Alphas were typically sought after as Erastes, and if Tom managed to become one despite being a halfblood, it would be a victory. Or, at minimum, an equalising factor in any political race against a Pureblood opponent.

So Slughorn _was_ still useful for career advice. He wasn’t utterly worthless. “I shall consider it,” Tom replied grudgingly, uninterested in explaining his own apathy towards mating when there was knowledge to be gained, and when none of the people he had ever encountered had stirred his passions at all. He had never sought to copulate with anyone except when it was strategically advantageous, and he could not foresee that changing. “But not yet. I want my next five to ten years to be devoted solely to the craft of teaching.”

“Now that is a praiseworthy attitude!” Slughorn beamed, although his beam was more obsequious and less… twinkly… than Dumbledore’s. “Teaching at Hogwarts is among the most respected and sought-after occupations in wizarding Britain, and would make you an ideal ministerial candidate with an established record of public service. You have planned wisely, Tom.”

“Only because I was taught by the best.” Perhaps Tom was laying it on a bit thick, but he could not afford to leave his employer with a negative impression of this meeting. “I cannot thank you enough for everything you’ve done for me.”

Slughorn was practically squirming with the gratification of having his ego—if not his nether regions—stroked. “Nonsense, Tom! You needn’t thank me. You would have excelled in any universe, with or without my support.”

“Now, that cannot possibly be true.” Tom reached into his most voluminous robe pocket and retrieved a gilt-edged, decorative box, which he opened as he placed it on Slughorn’s desk.

Slughorn sucked in a shuddering breath, as though Tom had presented him with an engagement ring instead of a box of candied pineapples. “ _Tom_ ,” he whispered, overwhelmed.

Well. It was time for Tom to make an exit; the atmosphere in this office, rank with Slughorn’s repugnant scent, was swiftly becoming intolerable. “Horace,” he replied, injecting some approximation of affection into his voice. “I must now depart to conclude my last week of teaching at Durmstrang. I shall see you in September for the new school year.”

Before the still-overwhelmed Slughorn could even respond, Tom executed a flawless bow and beat a hasty retreat out of the office, sparing only one lingering glance for the empty frame amongst the previous headmasters’ portraits, where Dumbledore’s picture was yet to appear.

***

Karkaroff’s ostentatious farewell feast in honour of Tom’s departure notwithstanding, Tom still found Hogwarts’ opening feast more affecting. These were the students he had always dreamt of teaching. This was where Tom was destined to be—this, and the Ministry, the only two places worthy of him. While Durmstrang had a more pro-Dark curriculum, which Tom had thoroughly enjoyed teaching, the school itself had not endeared itself to him beyond that. He had never once thought of it as home.

Hogwarts, though… Despite himself, Tom clutched his fork tightly at the sight of the Slytherin banner, rippling gracefully in its beloved silver and green.

Home. He was _home_.

Slughorn had, in the traditional welcoming speech, waxed so lyrical about Tom’s appointment that there were multiple raised eyebrows at the staff table; Tom was already a clear favourite, and this did not sit well with some. Sinistra, Vector and Snape all had tense, flat mouths, while Flitwick and Sprout appeared to be mildly confused. McGonagall was indifferent, but then, she had never been one for jockeying for power; she had it already, as the nation’s foremost Transfiguration master. She was seated beside her mate, the absolutely unbearable Sybill Trelawney, who dared to call herself a seer. Hooch, the Quidditch coach, was missing from the table, and Hagrid, a lumbering half-giant whom Tom scarcely remembered from his own Hogwarts years, was too uncomplicated to notice the politicking already occurring at the staff table, the factions taking and breaking shape.

It was almost like being back in Slytherin. Tom smiled.

The Sorting of the first-years was already underway when Tom caught a faint, sweet whiff of sandalwood wafting from the direction of the Gryffindor table. He tilted his head, nostrils flaring, but could not identify the precise source of that sweetness from this distance. Strange. Perhaps it was the high number of Omegas at Hogwarts that was confusing his senses; he had become accustomed to Durmstrang, which was more conservative and which had a largely Alpha and Beta student body.

No matter. The two Omegas on the staff, Trelawney and Hagrid, were about as appealing to him as Blast-Ended Skrewts, and the students would doubtless be the same. Tom no longer hoped he would discover a mate somewhere, as he had when he was a child; now, he knew he was superior to all, and that he had no match. It was better that way. His powers of reason were never compromised, and he was never taken out of commission by inconveniently-timed ruts.

When the dinner owls arrived after the Sorting, flapping over to the various House tables with their mail, Tom saw an eagle owl following, almost exactly, the trajectory of the scent that had drawn Tom’s notice. Naturally, he turned to look at who the owl landed in front of.

What he saw was a head of deplorably untidy black hair, a delicate jaw that was angled away from him, and a rather lovely mouth pursed in displeasure. Then, as if sensing Tom’s attention, the owner of that mouth looked up, and Tom found himself fixed by a pair of brilliant, if sullen, green eyes. Eyes that seemed to demand, altogether too defiantly, _What’re you looking at?_

Tom blinked. That was not a reaction he was accustomed to getting. Most people smiled back at him, captivated by what Tom knew to be his continuing good looks, or wilted in front of him, intimidated by his personality. He had certainly never been subjected to _recalcitrance_. Let alone from a student.

A student who was currently unrolling the parchment delivered to him, as unwillingly as if it contained the date of his own execution.

Beside Tom, McGonagall sighed. “Ah. Another suitor for Potter.”

Tom did not straighten, nor did he act in any way surprised. Instead, he looked away from Potter’s disconcertingly direct gaze and resumed cutting his steak tartare into neat, blood-red bites.

So the boy was the Potter heir. Harry Potter. Tom had heard of him, as Tom had kept track of all the British Pureblood lines, as well as their descendants, during his time at Durmstrang. A future Minister of Magic could not afford to forget who was who.

Rumour had it that Potter, an indirect descendent of the Peverells, possessed one of the Deathly Hallows: the infamous Invisibility Cloak. It had been all over the news a few years ago, when Potter had been discovered using it at school. The news had caused quite the fuss, even at Durmstrang, although the fuss had been as much about Harry Potter being an orphaned, halfblood Omega as it had been about him potentially owning a Hallow. Such sacrilege it had been to the Alphas of Durmstrang, that a mere halfblood and an Omega might possess an item of such power!

Still. Halfblood or not, Potter would have a seat on the Wizengamot upon graduating from Hogwarts. The seat would, unfortunately, not be his to do anything with until he got married to an Alpha, at which point the Alpha would sit in the Wizengamot as Potter’s proxy, with Potter only holding the seat in name.

A pity. Given how rebellious those green eyes were, Potter would have no qualms about talking down to the patriarchs and matriarchs of the most ancient Pureblood dynasties. It would have been amusing to watch.

Trelawney, who was leaning into her mate with inappropriate intimacy, simpered breathily, “And not his last suitor, either.” Her watery eyes, magnified by the round lenses of her spectacles, drifted aimlessly over the Great Hall. “His choice will change the world.”

“Of that I have no doubt,” McGonagall replied with her characteristic solemnity. “Potter’s busy changing it already.”

 _That_ piqued Tom’s curiosity. A seventh-year Gryffindor halfblood Omega, changing the world? In what way could Potter conceivably change it? As a schoolboy, he lacked experience; as a Gryffindor, he lacked tactical acumen; as a halfblood, he lacked connections; and as an Omega, he lacked legitimacy. He had nothing to build on. Even Tom, as a halfblood orphan raised by despicable Muggles, had his Alpha status and his Slytherin wiles to ferry him through the choppy waters of life.

What on earth could Potter be doing, for a teacher as hard to impress as McGonagall to comment on it?

So Tom cast a wandless, non-verbal Subausculto, a Dark eavesdropping spell, in the general direction of the Gryffindor table. It reported to his ears what his intended targets were saying, and showed him, in his mind’s eye, what they were doing, without him having to look at them.

Tom proceeded to eat his steak tartare, but saw, in his inner vision, a bushy-haired girl frowning at Potter worriedly as a scowling, redheaded boy snatched the letter from Potter’s hands and dangled it over the nearest candle until the thick, creamy, expensive parchment was reduced to ashes.

“Ron!” scolded the girl. “You know that won’t accomplish anything. She’ll just send more letters.”

“Like the four others she’s sent before,” Potter said glumly, stabbing at his own plate of roast chicken and mashed peas. Even his glumness was truculent; it was charming, because truculence was as far as it was possible to get from stereotypical Omega behaviour. Omegas were meant to be perpetually sighing, swooning, tearful, timid or submissive, none of which Potter appeared to be.

“Oh, shove off, Hermione,” the boy named Ron replied. “At least it’ll buy him time.”

 _Ron. Hermione._ Tom mentally flipped through the Hogwarts student roster, which he had memorised with the aid of a Memento charm, and came up with the last names Weasley and Granger, the only surnames in Gryffindor that matched those given names. A Pureblood and a Muggleborn; a truly diverse choice in friends, which spoke volumes about Potter’s politics.

“What time?” Potter groused. “I’ve only got ten months left before my annual heat, and I can’t use suppressants anymore, now that I’m seventeen. So either I throw myself upon the collective penises of Britain’s Alpha population—”

“Harry!” gasped Granger, scandalised.

“—or I accept an Erastes who’ll be _entitled_ to bugger me into the mattress _for my own good_.” Potter’s hostile food-stabbing continued in rhythm with his words, effectively expressing his opinion of Alphas. Perhaps he was imagining stabbing their genitals.

“Look, Harry, you’re lucky you _have_ a choice,” Weasley reasoned. “Most Omegas just have to go out there and try to survive until they find their mates, putting up with absolute fucking knotheads just to get through their heats. It’ll be much nicer to have some posh older Alpha look after you, innit? Just one, proven, safe Alpha instead of a string of iffy strangers? And it’ll be somebody who can introduce you to important folks, too, who can help you get a job.”

“You sound like Percy,” Potter retorted, like it was an accusation, and Weasley reacted as though it was.

“I’m not! I’m just—Harry, this Selwyn lady sounds like a right nutter, she does, but she’s rich, and she’s not too bad to look at.”

Both Potter and Granger gaped at Weasley incredulously.

“She has a mole on her chin the size of a Knut,” Potter enunciated slowly, disbelievingly. “And she’s ninety-three.”

“But she only looks about seventy! And the Alphas of that generation believed in, er, breeding Omegas face-down, so you’d never even have to look at her. Or her mole.”

“You’re disgusting, Ron,” Granger said primly, patting Harry on the back consolingly. “Don’t imagine any of that, Harry.”

“Too late.” Potter looked vaguely ill. “Thanks, Ron, you’re a real friend.”

“Just your friendly neighbourhood Beta, at your service!” Weasley grinned encouragingly, piling more food onto Potter’s plate like a mother hen force-feeding a skinny chick. Potter _was_ uncommonly skinny. “Come on, Harry. What about that Miller bloke who owled you before the holidays? His company makes the equipment used in manufacturing Every Flavour Beans! I read up on him for you. He’s legit.”

“If only you’d also read up on your schoolwork,” Granger chastised, “you might even pass without having to plagiarise your assignments.”

“As if _you’ve_ been reading up on your schoolwork, lately,” Weasley shot back. “All you’ve been doing is reading and rereading that letter from Hooch.”

Granger flushed. “I’m—I’m not—” She huffed in frustration. “I’m just considering the offer rationally!”

“Yep,” Potter muttered out of the corner of his mouth, around a spoonful of mashed peas. “Rationally, in your dormitory bed, with the curtains closed and your hands up your nightie.”

“You’re _both_ disgusting.” Granger flipped her hair. “Even if… if Madam Hooch is the most Alpha of Alphas—”

“She totally is,” Potter confirmed.

“I can’t accept her.” Granger drooped. “Because I actually have a _brain_ , too, not just hormones, and I can’t see what sort of career guidance she could ever give me. I mean, I’m aiming to be a lawmaker in the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures, and Hooch is a _Quidditch coach_. I’m hopeless at Quidditch! It doesn’t make any sense, and it won’t fulfill the terms of an Erastes contract. I don’t even understand why she asked me, of all people. She must have Omegas tripping over themselves to warm her bed.”

“But what if nobody else offers?” Weasley asked.

“Thank you for your vote of confidence, Ron.” Granger rolled her eyes. “Of course I’ll get other offers. I don’t have Harry’s famous last name or a Deathly Hallow or a future seat on the Wizengamot—not until I become head of my department, that is—but I do have the highest grades in _all_ my subjects. I’m hoping somebody at the Ministry will express an interest.”

“They will,” Potter assured her. “You’re the brightest witch of our age. Dumbledore said so.”

Granger smiled, a small, tremulous smile. “I miss him.”

Potter looked down. “Me, too.”

And Tom _burned_. Burned at the injustice of Dumbledore nurturing these snotty Gryffindor brats when he’d only ever put Tom down, and burned at his disappointment in Potter, whom Tom had genuinely thought was different, falling for Dumbledore’s false benevolence like everybody else. Just another pawn destined for the chessboard, then. Nothing special.

Tom cancelled the Subausculto, but not before hearing Granger say: “Ron’s right, Harry. You should allow them to court you, even if you don’t accept them in the end. Because while you’re being formally courted by an Erastes, the Alphas at school will have to stop bothering you.”

“Oh, they don’t bother me.” Potter’s eyes flashed. “They’re not even worth my time.”

***

Tom wasn’t sure why he was so disgruntled. Potter was remarkable only for his arrogance, and there definitely hadn’t been any talk of changing the world, except for Granger’s middling aspirations. Perhaps McGonagall was only impressed by Potter because she wrongly held Omegas to lower standards, as she clearly did her wife. Tom had never held Omegas to lower standards; he expected just as much from his Omega students, allies and enemies as he did from Alphas.

Tomorrow, classes would commence, and Tom would be able to put into action the penultimate stage of his plan to become Minister of Magic—the deliberate and systematic harvesting and conversion of this generation’s wizards and witches to his cause. These were the voters of tomorrow, the voters who would, in the next election, determine who won. Most wizarding adults were already firmly ensconced in some ideological camp, but the youth were the independent vote, and could be swayed.

Tom was very good at swaying people to his way of thinking—to his unique combination of political conservatism and social liberalism, which had something for everyone. Tom, as a politician, would appear to be the perfect centrist, while harbouring agendas that were extreme if taken on their own.

Tom would reintroduce Dark magic into the curriculum incrementally, beginning as a logical extension of Defence Against the Dark Arts; he would argue that one could not fight fire without comprehending how it worked, and there were times when fire could only be fought with fire. Tom would mandate the registration and monitoring of Muggleborn households, to ensure that the magical children raised therein were not being abused. He would open compulsory ‘finishing schools’ for eight- to ten-year-old Muggleborns that they would have to attend prior to attending Hogwarts, so that they were adequately prepared for and tolerant of wizarding traditions, and were not at a disadvantage, in terms of magical knowledge, compared to their Pureblood and halfblood peers. Tom would gently usher wizarding society away from its foolish, growing fondness for Muggles. He would enable Omegas to sit on the Wizengamot, to run for elections, and to inherit assets that would remain their own instead of being handed over to whichever Alpha they happened to marry. He would strike the Heat Clause from the Omega Protection Act, so that Omegas were not held responsible for assaults upon them by allegedly ‘heat-addled’ Alphas. He would send every rapist to Azkaban. No exceptions.

Yes, Tom Riddle was planning to change the world. Even if Harry Potter wasn’t.

After the feast was over, Tom concluded the inevitable rounds of small-talk with his fellow teachers and glided out of the hall. He passed the now-empty Gryffindor table on his way, and was caught again by that damnable scent—the rich softness of sandalwood combined with the tart sharpness of bergamot and the sweeter, purer undertones of jasmine, glimmering beneath the surface. A befuddling scent, too complex for easy categorisation. Much like Tom’s own scent, which Tom knew to be an overpowering combination of vetiver, coal and an earthen, rosy musk that a former admirer had once described as a ‘dark rose’. An overly lyrical description, in Tom’s view, and irrelevant, besides.

Potter was not as complex as his scent had promised. And what a shame that was.

No sooner had Tom reached the door of the Great Hall than a voice as smooth as molasses said from behind him, “Tom. A word, if I may?”

“Severus.” Tom turned and inclined his head respectfully; Snape was, after all, the Head of Slytherin, and he had the most flawlessly Occluded mind Tom had ever seen. It had no chinks in it whatsoever, like a fortress built of iron. Featureless, impenetrable iron. “How may I be of assistance?”

Snape’s eyes were endless tunnels, black as pitch and just as absent of light. “We spoke only briefly at the table, where I was unable to request your cooperation in a matter of significant urgency. I suspect there is an enemy of Hogwarts present within these very walls.”

Tom quirked a brow, acutely conscious of the wandless, wordless shield that Snape had just erected around them—a new, unheard-of privacy spell that prevented them from being listened in on, and Tom liked to think he had heard of every spell there was. “Indeed?”

“Indeed. Why, just now, I noted the presence of Dark magic within the Great Hall.” Snape’s features, ugly and feral as they were, were nonetheless completely blank. Impossible to decipher. “Did you happen to detect it, yourself?”

“I’m afraid not,” Tom replied calmly, as Snape climbed another few notches in his estimation. It was no easy feat to threaten someone so subtly, but Snape had just threatened Tom as surely as if he’d held a knife to Tom’s throat. “If I do, I’ll inform you immediately.”

“Excellent. That is all I can ask.” Snape lifted the privacy spell he had cast.

“Out of academic interest, may I ask what that spell you just used was?”

“Muffliato.” There was a spark in Snape’s eyes at last. “A spell of my own invention.”

“Very impressive.” The compliment was, to Tom’s own surprise, sincere. “So you’re a spell-maker, Severus.”

“As are you, Tom,” Snape replied, placing a menacing, ever-so-slight emphasis on Tom’s name. “Headmaster Dumbledore told me as much.”

“That was not all he told you about me, I wager.”

“No,” agreed Snape serenely. “It was not.”

They regarded each other with equal parts equanimity and enmity, a peculiar combination of emotions that only Slytherins were capable of. Snape’s Alpha scent, as coppery as blood and as shadowy as ink, rose between them like a hooded serpent and announced Snape’s hostility towards Tom more eloquently than words ever could—even Snape’s words, and Snape, Tom was starting to learn, was very eloquent.

Finally, with a nod of mutual respect, they parted ways and retired to their respective chambers.

Tom shrugged off his robes, toed off his boots, and sank into his bed with tomorrow’s lesson plans, revising them as he contemplated the events of the day. Meditation was the best means of preparing the mind for a restful sleep… or for a night of active Occlusion.

So Snape was Dumbledore’s man. Dumbledore’s spy.

How fascinating it was that Snape had declared war openly, instead of opting for subterfuge, as his Slytherin instincts must have bade him to. It had to have been Dumbledore himself who had ordered Snape to confront Tom, to warn Tom against using Dark magic on Hogwarts premises.

Tom’s pulse quickened at the thought of Dumbledore still being in the game. The old wizard had been checkmated, but he was not yet defeated. That shouldn’t have pleased Tom, but it did; he had always despised boredom, be it at the orphanage, where there were never enough books to read, or in the Slytherin common room, where Tom had been given no option but to endure hours of inane Pureblood chatter about blood supremacy.

If Tom’s pulse had also quickened earlier, at a whiff of sandalwood, he disregarded it. It was meaningless. He had more pressing concerns, and mediocre young Gryffindors were not among them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> harry reacting to courtship letters:
> 
> tom reacting to harry’s apparent “mediocrity”:
> 
> * * *
> 
> Aaaaaand some further notes for those who are interested in how the Erastes/Eromenos dynamic functions in this story! These notes can be read as a direct follow-on to the first set of notes above, **and are completely optional**. Skip them if you wish!
> 
> Traditionally, it is the Erastes who initiates the courtship of their desired Eromenos, who may accept it or reject it. Under the Erastes Act, Alphas are forbidden from courting Omegas under the age of seventeen, which is when Omegas become legal adults. That is also when Omegas stop using heat suppressants, as continued suppressant usage into adulthood is deleterious to Omegas’ health.
> 
> Student-teacher relationships within Hogwarts are condoned only if both parties are adults over seventeen and are either: a) mates or b) Erastes and Eromenos. If more than one Erastes decides to court an Eromenos, the courtship process can become quite competitive.
> 
> The rules of courtship are very strict and are designed to protect the Omega from undue harassment, as well as to give the Omega a full understanding of what each Erastes has to offer ~~other than the D~~. Erastes and Eromenos pairs are therefore lawful relationships of mutual convenience that are usually temporary, in that they only continue until either the Eromenos or the Erastes finds their true mate. If the Erastes finds a mate first, and breaks off the contract, then the Eromenos may be courted by another Erastes.
> 
> In rare cases, the Erastes and the Eromenos turn out to be each other’s true mates, which is demonstrated by the Erastes going into rut in response to the Eromenos’s heat. Alphas can only go into rut with their mates, and can only knot their mates, so it’s pretty easy to identify the real deal.
> 
> Guess who Harry’s “real deal” is?


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which I spend an inordinate amount of time describing Tom’s weirdly sexy morning routine, and both Tom and Harry begin to intrigue each other.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please be warned that this chapter contains the implied, off-screen verbal sexual harassment of Harry by an Alpha student. Tom puts the upstart in his place, don’t worry—but not before Harry does! There is also a brief mention of the past rape of Tom’s father by Tom’s mother. Yes, the use of love potions is rape.
> 
> Tom still grew up at Wool’s, and boy howdy did he hate it as much as he hated it in canon!
> 
> Roughly twenty percent of Hogwarts’ students are Omegas, forty percent are Alphas, and forty are Betas. This discrepancy in the Alpha-to-Omega ratio is not because it accurately reflects the size of the wider Omega population, but because conservative Pureblood families and just plain sexist families do not always believe in educating their Omegas.
> 
> In comparison, Durmstrang only has a five percent Omega population, being a more ‘traditionalist’ school. Even at Hogwarts, some subjects, like the more combative Defence Against the Dark Arts, have a greater fraction of Alpha students than Beta or Omega students.
> 
> I’ve modified Hogwarts’ architecture and layout somewhat to accommodate this story’s needs, but they are not major modifications. 
> 
> Oh, and I’m probably butchering the Latin I’ve used in my made-up spells; if you happen to know Latin, please do feel free to correct me or to suggest alternatives! I am humble before my gods. *prostrates self*

Tom’s chambers were at the very top of the Defence Against the Dark Arts Tower, adjoining his new office and classroom. At this height—higher than even the Clock Tower—a pre-dawn chill stilled the very air, as if it were a suspended, in-drawn breath. Frost lined the arched windowpanes of Tom’s bedroom like the most delicate, crystalline lace, woven into fractal patterns that arranged and rearranged themselves in response to Hogwarts’ magic. Tom had always thrilled at any evidence of how inextricably magic and nature were intertwined. Even the mundane shifting of frost on his windows was enough to inspire him, awaken him.

This would be the first day of his tenure as a Hogwarts professor. The first day of him living his dream.

Tom had arisen at precisely four in the morning, as he always did. He meditated for half an hour to once again organise his mind for a day of Occlumency, and then summoned a bleary-eyed House Elf for a pre-breakfast coffee.

He sipped his scalding-hot coffee and let it melt the chill out of him, even as he revived the dying fire in the hearth with a wandless spell. The firewood crackled and popped, incongruously merry. Tom leaned against the cold sill of the largest window, half-lidded and with his coffee mug in hand, watching the sun rise.

The sky brightened as gradually as milk being stirred into the blackest poison. A faint light crept into the room as stealthily as a pale-furred cat, rubbing itself against the furniture and leaving a half-hearted illumination in its wake.

Tom loved this, the mingled coldness and warmth of a Hogwarts morning, as he loved little else. There was a tranquility to the castle that made Tom feel as though the very stones themselves were asleep, and he the only one awake—well, he and the House Elf he had importunately awoken. The window he stood beside overlooked the Training Grounds, and, in the misty distance, the Quidditch Tower, whose hulking shape through the fog was as insubstantial as the mast of a ghost ship upon the sea.

This, this was perfect—the aromatic bitterness of his coffee, the silkiness of his gown against his naked skin, and the restful quiet of his mind, like that of a beast waiting patiently in the rushes for its prey. Here, in the privacy of his quarters, he allowed himself to be rumpled, even unkempt, his hair as dishevelled as Potter’s and his evening gown tied slightly askew over his bare chest and low-slung sleep trousers. The regimented, overly formal sense of fashion he adopted outside of his quarters was as much to establish himself as a disciplined, above-his-impulses Alpha as it was to satisfy his own fastidiousness. A fastidiousness he only set aside for these precious few minutes before he readied himself for the world.

At five in the morning, coffee drunk to its dregs and mind ticking neatly through his schedule for the day, Tom retreated into his bathroom to shave. He’d hexed the mirror’s personality out of it the night before; talking mirrors were perhaps the only type of magic he could not abide, given their tendency to fawn over his appearance like inanimate versions of Slughorn. Now, the voiceless glass reflected Tom’s sleep-softened features back at him.

It was like looking at a stranger. Gone was his habitual severity and the stern set of his jaw, which bore the barest hints of silvery stubble that caught the dim light. Tom hardened his expression until it was what it ought to be; it occurred to him, abstractly, that nobody else had ever seen his unguarded face, and that was how he liked it. He never could stand showing even the slightest vulnerability.

Despite having been born in 1926, Tom didn’t look a day over forty. Generally, the more magic there was in an organism, the more slowly it aged, because magic was, at its core, life force. As a result, not a single hair on Tom’s head was yet grey, although there was a subtle, distinguished lightening at his temples, and some of his stubble—like today’s—grew in silver before his daily shaving spell.

All in all, he looked much as he had three decades ago. His ageing was slowing even further the more powerful he got, the more magic he absorbed from ancient artefacts. That long jaunt of his across Europe wasn’t, as Slughorn had said, only about duelling Dark wizards and learning how to defend against the Dark Arts; no, it was the dedicated pursuit _of_ the Dark Arts, and of those Dark objects that might prolong his life. A mere century or two was inadequate for what Tom wanted to achieve, for the myriad ways he wanted to change wizarding society. And so he collected Dark objects only to devour them, to add their considerable power to his own.

Speaking of power… It had to be cultivated every day and watered as conscientiously as a mandrake, or it would wither and die. So, once his shaving was done and his mouth was freshened, Tom let his gown slither off his shoulders and onto the bathroom tiles, until he was clad in nothing but his sleep trousers. He was, after all, about to get very sweaty.

Tom drew his wand from its ever-present, invisible holster within the skin of his left forearm, and cast Spatium. The spell opened up a pocket in what Muggles called ‘hyperspace,’ but was only the space between worlds, between times. Snape had said that Tom was a spell-maker, and he was right; Tom had developed Spatium himself, as a dimension that he could enter into at any time, for any purpose that suited him, like a portable Room of Requirement. Tom could hide in there if he wished, or store items in there, or train in there, as he was about to.

In theory, all those who Apparated or travelled through folds in space—like the House Elves—passed through this same, liminal dimension at lightning speeds, but none of them had ever stopped to take in the view, let alone fashion a section of it into an all-purpose, secure, untrackable sanctuary.

What materialised around Tom was a blank cube of nothingness onto which Tom willed four walls, a floor and a ceiling, the walls far apart enough for a truly rigorous bout of duelling. The advantage of practicing magic here, in this hidden dimension, was that no trace of it could leak back to Tom’s original dimension. None of the Hogwarts staff—including the inconveniently watchful Snape—would pick up on the magic Tom unleashed here.

And unleash it, Tom did.

“ _Duplicare centonem_ ,” Tom spoke, and before him appeared a strange, sexless human hybrid of all the wizards and witches he had ever duelled. This patchwork illusion was capable of producing, at random, all the spells that had ever been cast against Tom, so that Tom could practice reacting to them in real time. The hybrid wasn’t an ideal duelling partner, because it lacked sentience and was incapable of strategy, but fighting it was better than letting his duelling skills decline altogether, letting his offensive magic lose its versatility and his instincts lose their sharpness.

He couldn’t, alas, afford to sustain realistic injuries when he had classes to teach that day, so he armoured himself in a layer of protective magic fashioned out of the very formless ether that this dimension was made of—a shield impossible to replicate in ‘normal’ reality, but produceable here. To test himself in lieu of wounds, he attached invisible weights to his legs that mimicked and accelerated the effects of physical exhaustion. When even that became boring, he altered the scenery to that of a forest’s, so he could practice duelling in an unpredictable environment with more obstacles as well as more hiding places.

Darting in and out of shadows, behind and between trees, Tom deflected vicious disembowelment spells and cast some of his own. A clean, cathartic violence. It purified the mind, simplified its otherwise complex processes into rapid-fire action and reaction, spell and counter-spell. The hybrid stalked him through the forest, leaves rustling under its shoes even as Tom muted his own footfalls with Snape’s borrowed Muffliato. When he shot a Confringo at the hybrid, it completely absorbed the curse, swivelled around, and levelled him with a Bombarda that Tom sidestepped only for the tree beside him to explode. Had Tom not been sufficiently armoured, splinters would have lodged themselves in his flesh. As it was, he immediately cast Telum, which transfigured those very splinters into long, deadly daggers that launched themselves at his enemy.

It was gratifying. Exhausting. Invigorating. Exhilarating.

After about an hour of ducking, diving, dodging and rolling, Tom was panting, sweat-slick and sticky, even as his illusory opponent was frustratingly—yet rewardingly, given that it was a projection of Tom’s own magic—composed. Tom got up, his biceps bunching with the effort, his limbs twingeing and his lungs aching, feeling alight and incandescent and _alive_. The simulacrum regarded him expressionlessly from across the dirt-strewn clearing, wand still held aloft.

Hm. Perhaps next time Tom would reinvent it as an Inferius, instead. Several Inferi, even, if he was up to the challenge.

“Thank you, old friend.” Tom bowed mockingly in the traditional duelling bow, vanished his ‘duelling partner,’ and stepped out of the Spatium as the dimension closed seamlessly behind him. He was back in his bathroom as though he’d never left it, and he stepped easily into the shower after shucking off his trousers and reabsorbing his wand into his forearm.

The shower’s rusty knobs creaked and its ancient pipes clunked before a hot, needle-sharp spray descended on Tom’s scalp and shoulders, and Tom exhaled in relief as the deluge pummelled his tired back.

Perfection.

Both his body and his magic had been pushed to their limits, and an enjoyable, soul-deep ache permeated him. Regrettably, the ache receded under the soothing heat of the shower and the influence his own healing magic, since he had an almost endless well of magical energy to draw upon. Opening an alternate dimension had taxed his reserves even more than the duelling had, but they were not so depleted that they could not be swiftly refilled.

This early-morning duelling practice had been a tradition of his for the last thirty-five years, and he had not deviated from it for even a day; his musculature and his magic were, as a result, honed as keenly as the weapons they were. He had no intention of allowing his muscles to go to fat or his reflexes to indolence, as was the case with many duellists-turned-teachers; no, even as an academic, he was determined to pursue his craft. He _would_ remain nimble on his feet. He could hardly teach Defence Against the Dark Arts if he stopped defending against them, now, could he? Even if it was in an alternate dimension and against an uninteresting automaton.

The people out to assassinate him once he was running for Minister would be far more interesting. And thanks to his practice, he would be ready for them.

By six-thirty, Tom was dressed in a form-fitting black waistcoat, crisp white shirt, juniper-green tie and black trousers, with black robes over them all. His hair had been tamed by comb and spell, and the very same lock of hair that had curled over his forehead as a teenager curled over it now—except that now, it leant him an air of sophistication instead of youthful hubris.

Tom then paced along the edges of his quarters, tracing their magical perimeters and checking every ward that he had cast upon his arrival yesterday. This, too, was an everyday ritual that he had practiced assiduously at Durmstrang, and that he saw no reason to cease at Hogwarts, given that Dumbledore still had at least one agent stationed at the school.

At seven, Tom headed down to breakfast at the earliest possible time. Most students and teachers only had breakfast between eight and eight forty-five, so Tom was unsurprised to see the entire hall empty except for—coincidentally—McGonagall and Granger. The latter sat at the Gryffindor table with her nose deep in a Runes textbook, and the former was groggily nursing a steaming cup of Earl Grey. A fragrant bowl of oats and berries popped into existence in front of Tom as he took his seat beside McGonagall and inclined his head courteously.

“Minerva,” he greeted her. “Has Sibyll not awoken?”

“Sibyll is still recovering from a terrifying vision she had yesterday,” Minerva replied dryly. “A vision helped along by rather a lot of alcohol, you understand.”

“Ah.” So the Divination professor was hungover on the first day of classes. Spectacular. How Trelawney could be any more incoherent was beyond him, but if anything could cause such a miracle to occur, it would be the generous consumption of alcohol. “My condolences.”

McGonagall snorted. “Waking up to a headache-ridden prophetic wife who has burrowed into the blankets like a mole and who insists on whimpering prophecies of mass destruction certainly merits your condolences, but you needn’t conceal your dislike of her from me.”

Tom had two choices, here—polite prevarication or blunt honesty—but as he was speaking to a Gryffindor, the most prudent choice was self-evident. “I wasn’t aware I was concealing it.”

McGonagall snorted again. “She’s her own woman, for all that I’m her Alpha. She is free to have friends and foes of her own. I am not her shepherd, nor am I her protector; she has an excellent ability to repel threats simply by being… herself, and I grant her that freedom. Not,” McGonagall added quickly, “that it is for me to grant.” She downed her Earl Grey after an awkward clearing of her throat.

Tom raised an eyebrow and intuited, “She does not appreciate your protectiveness, then?”

A pink blush suffused McGonagall’s cheekbones, and Tom was so unnerved by the imperturbable professor displaying such an emotion that his eyebrow climbed even higher. McGonagall mumbled, “Oh, no, she does… appreciate it…”

Tom repressed a wince. He had no desire whatsoever to picture Trelawney _appreciating_ McGonagall.

“But that is—well, this and that are separate things.”

 _Are they?_ As Tom had no mate, McGonagall’s cryptic comments might as well be Gobbledygook to him. Besides, he ought not to pry into the complexities of a coworker’s marital life any more than was warranted by lighthearted small talk, so he tactfully changed the subject. “Have you advice for me, Minerva, before my first day of teaching?”

“Nonsense, Tom. You have taught for decades already, albeit at Durmstrang, which differs considerably from Hogwarts in its demographics and, I assume, its culture.” McGonagall sobered. “My only advice to you is to keep in mind that this school has a twenty percent Omega population. It’s not as much as it should be, granted that many Pureblood families still insist on home-schooling their Omega children or on not educating them at all beyond submissive etiquette,” McGonagall’s disapproval of this phenomenon was palpable, “but still. The classroom dynamics you will have to confront at Hogwarts may differ starkly from what you are accustomed to.”

“I did study at Hogwarts myself,” Tom pointed out, and McGonagall paused to think.

“When you and even I were studying here,” she resumed pensively, “there were as few Omegas at this school as there still are at Durmstrang. But now, with steadily increasing Omega numbers, a lamentable fractiousness has begun to emerge within the students’ ranks. Alpha students may attempt to dominate classroom discussions and group activities, and you may have to step in to ensure that the Betas and especially the Omegas get as much of a say as the Alphas do, get to participate as much as the Alphas do, and get as much of an exposure to every aspect of their education.”

Tom digested this. “Thank you, Minerva.” He experienced a grudging flicker of respect for the Transfiguration master; she, unlike Slughorn, had not succumbed to the irrationality of sexism. “I will apply your advice.”

A rare, thin smile lifted McGonagall’s mouth. “It was my pleasure. But do not worry overmuch; there is a solution to every predicament, and every subject presents a different predicament. Severus has reported having to distribute potion ingredients himself, equally and democratically, to forestall Alphas from pushing Omegas out of the path to the supply closet and claiming all the finest ingredients for themselves. Socially ingrained domineering behaviour, unjust and unfair as it is, is not easy to undo within a mere seven years of schooling.”

Tom noted McGonagall’s use of the phrase ‘socially ingrained’ instead of ‘biologically ingrained,’ and his estimation of her rose just as it had with Snape. How pleasant it was to have colleagues who were competent. “Indeed,” he acknowledged. “So equal access to resources remains an issue even within school walls.”

McGonagall set down her cup, her jaw firming. “It is our duty to counteract any inequalities to the utmost of our abilities.”

“I concur,” said Tom with uncharacteristic sincerity. As if she sensed that, McGonagall’s eyes warmed.

The remainder of breakfast passed peacefully, with Tom savouring his oats while McGonagall consumed no less than four cups of tea. Tom pondered their conversation as he ate. ‘Socially ingrained’ was a catchphrase common in progressive circles and progressive news media, such as _The Wizarding World Today_ and the less seriously-taken _The Quibbler_. It put McGonagall squarely in the camp of left-wing liberals, and therefore among Tom’s prospective future supporters, at least when it came to Omega-positive social reform. That was the tack he would have to take with her if he wished to earn her vote. He would have to de-emphasise his Muggleborn monitoring policies, however, or would have to re-contextualise them as empowering Muggleborns by giving them the same advantage of a pre-Hogwarts magical education that Purebloods had.

By the time Tom left the breakfast table to prepare his classroom and his office, Minerva had departed, a dozen more students had trickled in, and Granger had moved on to a Charms text. A laudable spirit of enquiry, not unlike Tom’s when he had been a student.

This was why Muggleborns and magical children brought up by Muggles would benefit from Tom’s political leadership. Granger should not have had to scrabble to catch up with her relatively unindustrious Pureblood peers; with her innate intelligence and her commitment to her studies, she deserved to have been the top student in her year from the moment she stepped into Hogwarts, not only when she was leaving it. If Tom succeeded in establishing his Muggleborn finishing schools, students like Granger would arrive at Hogwarts as well-equipped for it as any Abbott, Malfoy or Black.

As for Omegas, Tom vowed that never again would there be another Omega like his father. Tom would not tolerate it. As a child of Omega rape who had lost nigh everything because of it—his magical heritage, a home, a family and a childhood free of abuse—Tom found the assault and objectification of Omegas repulsive. His Alpha mother had drugged his Omega father with Amortentia until he had conceived her child and had subsequently died in childbirth, and Tom would never, ever forget what that crime had done to him… to all of them.

He would never permit it to happen again. Not on his watch.

***

As fate would have it, Tom’s first class of the day was with the seventh-year Slytherin and Gryffindor cohort. Heeding McGonagall’s advice, Tom carefully observed how the seating arrangements were split not only by House, but by sex. Slytherin had clumps of Alphas seated at the front, with Betas and Omegas in the rows behind them—Omega, to be specific, as Nott was the only Slytherin Omega present. The Gryffindors had a similar layout, with Potter and his two friends bringing up the rear. Only Thomas, an Alpha, was seated out of order, next to an Omega named Finnegan; they were mooning over each other so much that they must be mates. The rest of the class had maintained the prevailing social order to an uncanny degree.

That wouldn’t do. Duellists-in-training had to be partnered according to ability, not according to archaic, stereotypical misrepresentations of power.

“Up,” said Tom, not bothering to introduce himself or his subject. These were seventh-years; they did not need to be mollycoddled, nor to have their time wasted on pleasantries. When the students looked at him in incomprehension, he repeated, “Get. Up.”

His brusqueness was commanding enough to have the students scurrying, even the Alphas. No sooner had they stood up that Tom, with a wandless gesture, sent their desks and chairs flying to the four corners of the room, where they stacked themselves out of the way.

He disregarded the students’ gasps at his display of wandless magic; they’d better get used to it if they were in his class.

“Defence Against the Dark Arts can only be learned via a judicious application of theory, strategy, instinct, and physical fitness. Of these four, instinct is the hardest to acquire and the hardest to train, and can only be gained through experience. It is instinct that I will be teaching you for the rest of this term; without it, your likelihood of passing the end-of-year practical examination is nil—not to mention your likelihood of surviving an actual duel.” Tom shed his robes, hung them on a nearby hook, and rolled up his sleeves. “Robes off, now, everyone, and sleeves up, just like this.”

The students followed suit, if somewhat dubiously; Granger, who probably preferred theory to action, was the slowest to comply. The Avery heir was sporting a vicious sneer, transparently hoping to wreak carnage and prove his superiority—a tiresome Alpha trait—while Potter had an odd, hard-to-categorise gleam in his eyes. Excitement? Fear? Tom couldn’t tell which it was, and while Potter’s scent would have been more enlightening, Tom was not about to breathe in that scent again when it had such a peculiar effect on him, particularly when he was in the midst of teaching. He had made an executive decision to ignore Potter’s scent altogether. In fact, it was only appropriate to ignore all the students’ scents unless they grew strong enough to indicate injury or trauma. While some might consider such caution extreme, Tom considered it an additional safeguard against unknowingly discriminating between Alphas and Omegas.

Tom inspected his students critically. “Jog in place while I instruct you.”

There were groans of complaint from the more lethargic students, whose bellies were full of breakfast and whose sleep was likely inadequate as a result of end-of-holiday festivities. Tom stared them into submission. If their bodies were so unfit that they could not even jog for a few minutes, then they could hardly survive a strenuous duel.

As his students huffed and puffed pathetically, Tom continued, “You cannot learn instinct from a duelling partner who is poorly matched. If your partner is less capable than yourself, then you will learn nothing from them, except what _not_ to do, and if your partner far exceeds you, then you will be crushed instantly, without a chance at learning what a proper, drawn-out fight can be. Without a chance to develop instinct.”

Tom wordlessly cast on his students the same spell he’d cast on himself this morning, that attached unseen weights to their legs. When they stumbled, Tom said, “Keep jogging. You can shorten your fitness regimes by spelling an incline onto otherwise flat ground, or by adding resistance in the form of magical weights. You can accomplish in minutes what you may, unchallenged, accomplish in half an hour. After a short warm-up, of course, to prevent sprains. Stop jogging.”

The Omegas were the most ruddy-cheeked and exhausted, with the exceptions of Nott and Potter, but Tom was not foolish enough to ascribe that general unfitness to inborn Omega frailty. No, it was only that Omegas were discouraged from pursuing athletic sports, exercise or even Quidditch, and were given less access—as McGonagall had indicated—to resources that might enable them to improve their fitness.

It was curious, though, that both Nott and Potter were much fitter than the majority of the Alphas, although the Alphas did not notice this, facing forward and oblivious to the Omegas behind them as they were. Even more curious was the brief— _very_ brief—glance that Nott and Potter exchanged, a glance that Tom recognised as that of complicity. But complicity in what?

A Gryffindor and a Slytherin, conspiring towards an unknown goal. Interesting.

The Alphas, having caught their breaths, now turned to smirk at the Betas and Omegas arrayed behind them. When Tom saw the Alphas’ despicable smugness at their own strength compared to the Omegas’ apparent weakness, he promptly decided to throw the previous professor’s pairing system out of the window. Tom’s predecessor had been a swaggering dullard known as Gilderoy Lockhart, whom Tom had been unfortunate enough to encounter—and eliminate—at a duelling tournament fifteen years ago. Why Dumbledore had hired the nincompoop was beyond Tom, but Tom refused to perpetuate Lockhart’s inanities, celebrity or not. Lockhart had, as per his woefully inadequate notes, assigned Alphas to Alphas, Omegas to Omegas and Betas to Betas, and in odd-numbered classrooms had assigned any leftover students to himself. An unimaginative and unproductive approach.

Tom would have to repair years of damage. He would have to dismantle prejudice, because prejudice destroyed a duellist’s capacity for logical, unbiased strategy. He would have to build the Omegas’ confidence, take the Alphas down a number of notches, and encourage the Betas to see themselves as more than just boring, second-class, middle-of-the-road wizards and witches. He would have to feed talent and starve bigotry.

“I must appraise your individual capabilities as duellists before I can assess how best to assist you in developing a personalised, tailor-made duelling practice and training regimen. To that end, I will now randomly assign you duelling partners and will observe you as you fight.”

There were, Tom calculated, fourteen students and seven possible pairs, with none, thankfully, left over for him. He’d rather focus on learning from his students before he could expect them to learn from him.

“Avery with Finnegan. Parkinson with Weasley. Longbottom with Nott. Rowle with Potter. Granger with Crabbe. Zabini with Greengrass. Goyle with Thomas.” Tom noted the conspicuous absence of the current Malfoy heir; Tom had heard that Draco Malfoy, as an Omega, was being home-schooled in preparation for his marriage to Zabini. This was the only time in living memory that a Malfoy progeny was not an Alpha. How Abraxas must be rolling in his grave.

“But, sir,” interjected Avery, “we Alphas shouldn’t be duelling Omegas, should we? I mean,” he curled his mouth in disdain, “we could _hurt_ them.”

“And they could hurt you,” Tom returned coolly. “Such is duelling. Or do you imagine, Mr Avery, that duelling involves braiding flowers into each other’s hair while gentle unicorns look on?”

The class tittered, and Avery scowled.

“That said,” Tom warned, “hurting your duelling partners beyond bruising is banned at this early stage. You are yet beginners; if you deploy the more dangerous offensive spells, you might cause severe harm, as you will not have the requisite amount of control. Thus, the rules of this initial duel are simple. The first to disarm an opponent wins. Drawing blood or causing serious injury will result in disqualification. Casting a spell classified Factor Four or above on the Mortality Scale will also result in disqualification, and you will be permanently expelled from the class. You covered the Mortality Scale in sixth year, and should be familiar with it.”

Granger was sticking her hand straight up, so Tom nodded at her. “Speak.”

“Professor Riddle,” she said, “would spells not classified on the Mortality Scale be permissible?”

“No.” Tom quirked a brow. “Are you implying that you have knowledge of arcane or newly invented spells that the Ministry itself may not know of?”

“It was just a theoretical question.” Granger lowered her hand, embarrassed. “Thank you, sir.”

“Can Dark spells be used, Professor?” Zabini asked in a silvery, suggestive tone; he must be out to ascertain Tom’s own position on the Dark Arts.

“As there is no explicit rule against it in the Defence Against the Dark Arts curriculum,” Tom answered quietly, “Yes.”

There were more gasps of horror—not all of them from Gryffindors—but Tom discounted their exclamations as futile. It wasn’t as though Slughorn would dare to disagree with him, should any of the students go crying to the headmaster about minor Dark spells. This school was no longer the bastion of Light that it had been under Dumbledore. “Now, we shall go from theory to practice. Arrange yourself in your assigned pairs and find a part of the classroom to duel in. Begin.”

They began. There was the usual, pedestrian, unoriginal spell-casting, with Slug-Vomiting charms and Bat-Bogey hexes aplenty. Still, there was the occasional bout of creativity, such as from Zabini, who cast a low-level Dark spell, Excorio, which compelled an opponent to pick at their skin until it bled. Zabini was evidently well-versed enough in the spell that he could reduce its intensity and avoid the drawing of blood, which would have disqualified him. Clever. Even cleverer was Thomas’s technique of creating lifelike replicas of deadly creatures to spook his opponent; Thomas must have the aesthetics of an artist, with how detailed his replicas were, down to every feather and claw. Tom awarded Gryffindor ten points.

While Tom was at the front of the classroom, correcting Longbottom’s stance, there was a loud _bang_ from the back of the room. Tom whipped around, wand sliding out of his forearm and into his hand. He saw, much to his own startlement, Sebastian Rowle collapsed against the opposite wall as if a giant fist had picked him up and hurled him there. Standing across from Rowle was a panicked-seeming Harry Potter.

Potter, who turned to Tom with large green eyes and breathed, “I’m sorry, Professor, I don’t know what happened.”

Tom stood there, motionless.

Potter was liar. A terrible liar. Terrible beyond belief. He might even be said to be a _lazy_ liar, and Tom had never brooked laziness in any of his students; he could even admire lies if they were well-done. But in this case, he could see why Potter had never had to put much effort into his lies, given that he’d been taught by Lockhart. Most Alpha teachers would have melted with concern at the sight of those wide, fearful Omega eyes, automatically assuming that an Omega was not capable of powerful, deliberately aggressive magic and that it had to have been a distressed Omega’s accidental magic manifesting in self-defence.

But Tom was not most Alphas. He was an attentive and perceptive teacher who didn’t believe any sex to be superior to any other, and most of all, he knew a liar when he saw one. It took one to know one, after all.

“What was the exact sequence of events that led to this, Mr Potter?” Tom demanded as he strode towards Rowle, noting with some amusement that Rowle was not unconscious, merely shocked, and was beginning to get up again.

“I just…” Potter shuffled his feet in a passable imitation of nervousness. “I… I don’t…”

Here, a teacher like Lockhart would have leapt forward to offer support, to cosset and overindulge a plainly distraught Omega, because Omegas were obviously too fragile for duelling and would respond to the most insignificant threat with accidental magic. But Tom only tilted his head and _watched_ Potter, with a reptilian patience, until he heard the boy swallow. That was as much of an admission of guilt as Tom was going to get. He dipped shallowly into Potter’s mind using Legilimency, expecting a corroboration of that same guilt, but was almost knocked backwards by a tidal wave of sheer _rage_ , a rage that bore no resemblance to the meekness on Potter’s face.

Not so terrible a liar, then.

“Potter’s a bloody lunatic,” Rowle accused. “All I did was talk to him and he—without even drawing his wand!”

Well.

Well, well, _well_.

Perhaps McGonagall hadn’t been entirely mistaken about Potter’s potential.

“And what did you talk to Mr Potter about?” Tom queried innocently.

Rowle flushed to the tips of his ears. He did not reply.

“Since Mr Potter’s memory is unreliable,” Tom said wryly, “it is your own silence that condemns you, Mr Rowle. Did the topic of your… conversation… happen to be sexual in nature, perchance?”

Rowle persisted in not replying, so Tom had to fill in the blanks for any nosy classmates who might be listening, had to weave an account of events that would protect Potter from blame.

“I can only fathom that Mr Potter must be dreadfully traumatised by your unwanted attentions, to be so incapable of completing his own sentences. You clearly harassed this _helpless, defenceless Omega_ —” Tom relished Potter’s irritated twitch at each emphasised word “—enough for the _poor boy_ —” Potter twitched again “—to be forced to manifest accidental magic, _like a child_.” That last twitch from Potter had Tom fighting down a grin with more difficulty than he could ever recall having in suppressing his own reactions. He wanted to laugh, desperately, but instead he managed to rasp, “Fifty points from Slytherin.”

“Fif—” Rowle gaped. The classroom exploded into a cacophony of protests from the Slytherins and victorious hooting from the Gryffindors. “That can’t be right! I just said some nice things about his looks, called him pretty—that’s a compliment, isn’t it?—when he suddenly...”

“Firstly, that is a catcall, not a compliment. And secondly, think carefully,” Tom murmured, too low to be heard over the hubbub, so that only the two boys before him would hear him. “Are you sure you want to say that an Omega overpowered you and defeated you in fair combat?”

Rowle paled to chalkiness and then went a blotchy, humiliated red. Potter, meanwhile, was staring at Rowle’s changing colours as if at a rainbow, his jaw hanging slightly open. Never before, Tom wagered, had Potter seen an Alpha being dressed down like this for verbally harassing an Omega; in this situation, the Omega’s distress would typically be seen as a melodramatic overreaction to perfectly natural Alpha behaviour—to a few harmless words. But Tom could not allow such harassment to go unremarked on, lest the Alphas in his class get the impression that it was acceptable.

“Then you should reconsider, Mr Rowle,” Tom said at his normal volume, rather cheerfully. This was the most enjoyment he’d had teaching a class in a long, long time. If not ever. “Because what you say here will be what the official record of this incident will state.” _The shame of an Alpha being weaker than an Omega, immortalised for all to see._ Tom didn’t have to say that bit aloud; it was implied.

“What about _him_?” Rowle spat in Potter’s direction, while theatrically rubbing a bruise on his own arm. “The student who actually caused injury? Isn’t he going to lose any points?”

At that, Tom’s customary coldness regarding violations of consent came to the fore. His expression must have iced over, because Rowle flinched backwards. “For defending himself? No.”

Rowle’s beady eyes were ablaze with indignation and betrayal—betrayal at the fact that Tom, a fellow Alpha from his own House, was turning against him. “Aren’t you a Slytherin?”

“Aren’t you an Alpha?” Tom’s voice was thick with contempt. “Act like it.”

Tom whirled around and stalked back to his desk, but not before he heard Weasley blow a long, appreciative whistle. Potter, however, was still slack-jawed.

Good. A predictable teacher was a boring one.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alphas in Tom’s class: Avery, Crabbe, Longbottom, Parkinson, Rowle, Thomas and Zabini.
> 
> Betas in Tom’s class: Weasley, Goyle and Greengrass.
> 
> Omegas in Tom’s class: Granger, Finnegan, Nott and Potter.
> 
> Everyone’s seen [this](https://preview.redd.it/jkae25k0pbg21.jpg?auto=webp&s=9bc072c3496250b26b681bf1ac26df185cdacb1b) fanart of Tom by [perditinxroad](https://www.artstation.com/perditionxroad), but that’s what my version looks like, too.
> 
> If you want extra eye-candy, here’s [Tom](https://i.pinimg.com/736x/d0/75/ed/d075ede4ff8bd270ea7544d965355e9f.jpg), shirtless with a messy bedhead and morning stubble. I mean, the dude’s trained every day for decades. He’s gotta be ripped. If you wanna know what his _expression_ is like when he’s in strict professor mode, though? [This is it.](https://i.pinimg.com/originals/6b/47/75/6b4775e7000cca5ddf49537236441955.jpg) (Without the stubble, this time, since he’s clean-shaven when he’s on the job.)
> 
> And [here’s](https://i.pinimg.com/474x/37/b5/70/37b570bf32393c4affcfdff55963cf06.jpg) Harry being delicate and lovely-mouthed (but with black hair and green eyes, of course), and [just being irresistibly soft in general](https://data.whicdn.com/images/293355089/original.jpg) (until he kicks you in the balls).
> 
> Also, for those of you shipping Minerva/Sibyll, here’s [a young Minerva](https://assets.mugglenet.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/The-Prime-of-Miss-Jean-Brodie_Maggie-Smith.gif) and [a young Sibyll](https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-oyKWWW_e7XE/UbWLFMqNWEI/AAAAAAAABqc/lmqeHeuj1lI/s1600/tumblr_llzg7k1KbJ1qer9jho1_500.gif)! Look at their matching flirtatious expressions! That’s how I envision them when they first got together… flirting with each other until everybody around them got sick of it. ~~That and Minerva’s dick is, like, the biggest of all Alpha dicks, so Trelawney’s one lucky lady.~~
> 
> Oh, and my thanks to [thegreenmagician](https://archiveofourown.org/users/thegreenmagician/pseuds/thegreenmagician) for telling me who the artist of the above fanart is!

**Author's Note:**

> PLEASE REVIEW MY SWEET FRIENDS, MY HEART IS IN YOUR HANDS ❤️


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